Woods suggests combining natural language queries and semantics — such as sued by IBM Watson and Microsoft’s Power BI for Office 365 — could be a solution.

Unfortunately, he says, Microsoft’s way is hand-crafting the semantic model, which could become a bottleneck.Ideally, Woods says, a solution automatically or with machine learning assistance should creates semantic models.

But, he argues, there may be enough tools around now that a good enough solution can be fashioned.

Currently a freelance writer, I'm the former editor of ITWorldCanada.com and Computing Canada. An IT journalist since 1997, I've written for several of ITWC's sister publications including ITBusiness.ca and Computer Dealer News. Before that I was a staff reporter at the Calgary Herald and the Brampton (Ont.) Daily Times.